Eating In Translation

MCG Grand Cafe

Oildown, the national dish of Grenada (Saturday only, $12), rarely receives such a pretty presentation. Long-simmered together in coconut milk, herbs, and spices until the liquid is greatly cooked down, the weightier ingredients acquire a look-alike yellow-green glow. Until you dig in, it can be a challenge to distinguish pickled pigtail from salt cod or breadfruit from dumpling (the oblong, doughy Caribbean sort of dumpling). The flower provides a natural resting place for the eye, albeit a temporary one: It too is edible.

MCG Grand Cafe
1199 Nostrand Ave. (Fenimore-Hawthore Sts.), Prospect Lefferts Gardens, Brooklyn
718-774-0555
www.Squareup.com/Market/MCG-Grand-Cafe
Closed Monday

Nova Alianca Bakery & Cafe

This cigar-shaped pastry ($2.50) owed what sweetness it had to a dusting of sugar. On cutting through the flaky shell, I found a golden filling that was egg-yolky and fairly firm. I didn't catch the Portuguese name at the time, but a fan of EIT has since supplied it: "charuto de ovo," literally "egg cigar." (Thanks, Max!) Nova Alianca subsequently offered "pastél de Tentúgal," after a village well-known for its baked goods, and suggested that "strudel" is a reasonable synonym.

Nova Alianca Bakery & Cafe
121 Ferry St. (at Madison St.), Newark, New Jersey
973-344-4567
www.Facebook.com/NovaAliancaBakeryCafe

Chatpati Mela

Holsteins, green fields, Mid-Atlantic vernacular architecture — and the finishing touch for a Bangladeshi chatpati.

Satay Malaysian Cuisine

Perhaps the taller glass is meant to show off the colors. This air bandon ($3.95), like the squatter servings of ice kacang and chendol in the background, is a shaved-ice concoction that straddles the boundary between drink and dessert. Atop an intense green layer of jellied cubes, golden strips of jackfruit, and pale, gummy attap seeds is the shaved ice itself, dyed pink by red rose syrup, the flavor you'll taste with every scoop of the spoon or slurp through the straw. "Bandon" is evidently a corruption of "Bandung"; the capital of West Java, Indonesia, is widely associated with pink drinks.

Satay Malaysian Cuisine
46-01 Kissena Blvd. (at Holly Ave.), Flushing, Queens
728-888-1868

Casa Vasca

Highlight of an early Sunday lunch for three: monkfish (special, $24) in a mushroom-laden garlic sauce. (Pass the rice, please.) Not shown: bread basket, caldo gallego, chorizo, octupus (with potatoes), cabrito (and more rice), sangria.

It's good that we did most of our reconnaissance in the morning; with empty bellies we could walk at a respectable speed. For a future visit to the Ironbound we've identified two bakeries with a wide assortment of Brazilian pizzas (one even offers a weekly "pizza buffet") and a live poultry market with a sideline in cuyes viveros.

Casa Vasca
141 Elm St. (at Prospect St.), Newark, New Jersey
973-465-1350

Crab Man Mike

Boiled shrimp (ten for $5) aren't Mike's namesakes, but they're easy to eat on the move, especially if you're not too fussy about peeling them fully. They pack the same cayenne wallop as his celebrated crabs, so if you take them on a hike — say, from East Harlem to Mott Haven, across the Third Ave. Bridge — you'll be happy to meet an ices cart being trundled your way.

Crab Man Mike
Sidewalk stand on East 125th St. between Fifth and Madison Aves., Manhattan
Afternoon, Monday through Saturday, April through early October

The NoMad Bar

The burger ($18) at first seems too precious. Want fries? That's extra. But approach it edgewise and you'll find that the patty has plenty of heft; take a juicy bite and you'll marvel at its richness. Credit a blend of dry-aged chuck and ample portions of suet and bone marrow. Counterpoints: red onion, cheddar, and a trio of housemade pickles (included). The least familiar is fennel.

The NoMad Bar
10 West 28th St. (Broadway-Fifth Ave.), Manhattan
347-472-5660
www.TheNoMadHotel.com/#!/dining /menus/the-nomad-bar

Lok Lok Restaurant

(This venue is closed.) "Tulip cake"? The menu-writer surely didn't mean to mince words; the appetizer in question is a trio of pan-fried turnip cakes ($3.00). But that slip of the pen did bring to the fore the impression of seasoning that was overly delicate. To be fair, our dining group had lately grown accustomed to spicier Chinese cuisines, and so perhaps we owe this Cantonese restaurant a return visit with refreshed palates.

Also shown: dry scallop congee ($3.50); snow pea leaves with crab meat ($18.95).

Lok Lok Restaurant
42-96 Main St. (at Cherry Ave.), Flushing, Queens
718-358-6488

Gold Medal Flour

Side-by-side surviving signs, seen from Eighth Ave. near 17th St., Manhattan

S. & S.O. Produce Farms

Dirt-cheap snack: carrots ($2 per bunch).

S. & S.O. Produce Farms
Goshen, New York
At the Union Square Greenmarket, Manhattan
Wednesday and Saturday
www.GrowNYC.org/greenmarket /manhattan-union-square-sa
"One of Greenmarket's founding farmers in 1976"